What I'm reading from meikle, but please correct me if I understood you incorrectly, and what i feel myself is that Noetics isn't so much a defense of religion, but that it works along the same ways as religion, and by extent beliefs such as New age spiritualism.

'I believe something therefor it must be true. No matter whether empirical observation and testing has debunked it.'

Noetics has as much of a place in science as a cow does in a figure skating competition. That however goes for religion and spirituality as well. Still, over 75 percent of the worlds population is either religious or spiritual so they do have a place in our world. So maybe Noetics does as well.

I try to not comment on what other people mean or what I think they mean or what I interpret from what I think I hear when I try to figure out what I think they mean. That way lies madness.

I also believe that everything should be investigated. Including the possibility of figure skating cow competitions. Hard science has limits that are expanding all the time but it does have limits imposed on it when some practitioners believe that the effects of science are finite. We limit ourselves in the same way. We look for something, find it and stop looking for anything else. Those who make discoveries keep looking either through dogged determination, the strong belief that there is more or gut instincts that lead to realizations that two widely different phenomena are related.

As I said above I didn't bring religion into this and don't wish to. The reason is that when people start talking about it or beliefs of that sort discussion degenerates into unpleasantness as usually happens when anyone with strong feelings about anything attempts to alter the course of a discussion. I haven't read all there is to read about this subject and if I do find anything that makes me think they are selecting a religion or belief system and using their practices to defend it I'll admit that.

I try to not comment on what other people mean or what I think they mean or what I interpret from what I think I hear when I try to figure out what I think they mean. That way lies madness.

Contrarily, clarity is integral to meaningful communication. If you aren't sure what someone is trying to communicate, asking them and uncovering that is essential to having a discussion.

I said very clearly that noetic science exists in the same realm as religion, however; the fact that you don't like seeing it compared to religion isn't going to change what I meant. The issue under discussion is very similar to the one you found yourself arguing in the free will thread, though: the existence of instinct, intuition, and determination are not what is under examination here. The issue is proposing that these things somehow operate beyond the confines of observable universe.

You brought the discussion of noetics into the forum dedicated to questions regarding "science, technology, history, and other topics of an academic nature." Colorful prose and motivational language does not make for a powerful argument in this setting. When noetic science says it wants to study consciousness, that's awesome. Consciousness is an exciting thing and it is incredibly deserving of study. However, the "meeting of mind and spirit", to quote the Institute of Noetic Science, is less valid: what is 'spirit'? What does it mean? How do you measure it? Until you can actually define what you're talking about and determine a way of empirically testing for it, it can't be science.

Now, there are experiments that are being conducted, have been, etc, that address topics of the sort, but to my knowledge, those that have been tested in a scientifically valid manner (ie, accounting for outside variables, consistent procedure, similar results after multiple experiments, etc) have never shown that consciousness has any way to affect the world as a force which is, as best I can gather, the core idea behind noetic science.

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The reason is that when people start talking about it or beliefs of that sort discussion degenerates into unpleasantness as usually happens when anyone with strong feelings about anything attempts to alter the course of a discussion.

You asked:

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Now I'm wondering if anyone here has heard of Noetics, studied it or researched it, and what you think of it.

I do not think it is very polite to accuse someone of trying to "alter the course of discussion" when they are merely answering your initial question. "This is bullshit" is a totally legitimate answer to, "What do you think of this?"

Contrarily, clarity is integral to meaningful communication. If you aren't sure what someone is trying to communicate, asking them and uncovering that is essential to having a discussion.

I said very clearly that noetic science exists in the same realm as religion, however; the fact that you don't like seeing it compared to religion isn't going to change what I meant. The issue under discussion is very similar to the one you found yourself arguing in the free will thread, however: the existence of instinct, intuition, and determination are not what is under examination here. The issue is proposing that these things somehow operate beyond the confines of observable universe.

You brought the discussion of noetics into the forum dedicated to questions regarding "science, technology, history, and other topics of an academic nature." Colorful prose and motivational language does not make for a powerful argument in this setting. When noetic science says it wants to study consciousness, that's awesome. Consciousness is an exciting thing and it is incredibly deserving of study. However, the "meeting of mind and spirit", to quote the Institute of Noetic Science, is less valid: what is 'spirit'? What does it mean? How do you measure it? Until you can actually define what you're talking about and determine a way of empirically testing for it, it can't be science.

Now, there are experiments that are being conducted, have been, etc, that address topics of the sort, but to my knowledge, those that have been tested in a scientifically valid manner (ie, accounting for outside variables, consistent procedure, similar results after multiple experiments, etc) have never shown that consciousness has any way to affect the world as a force which is, as best I can gather, the core idea behind noetic science.You asked:I do not think it is very polite to accuse someone of trying to "alter the course of discussion" when they are merely answering your initial question. "This is bullshit" is a totally legitimate answer to, "What do you think of this?"

Seconded, all of this.

Cognitive Sciences are an intriguing field, and Noetics are examining many of the same phenomena, just without the assumption that they are reducible into anything that science can qualify or falsify. Noetics even goes a step further backwards than Philosophy of the Mind, which at least examines mental abstracts and theories in the light that they are logically reducible to an empirical basis. Noetics just tosses empirics out the window entirely, then uses nonetheless logical constructs to validate their claims in a circular fashion.

sci•ence: Systems of acquiring knowledge that use observation, experimentation, and replication to describe and explain natural phenomena.

no•et•ic sci•ences: A multidisciplinary field that brings objective scientific tools and techniques together with subjective inner knowing to study the full range of human experiences.

I dislike the attempt to equate something to religion in this case. Many things in everyday life have the aspect of a religion but they aren't religions much to the dismay of Pittsburgh Steelers fans.

I enjoy watching people reach beyond the limits they impose on their abilities and seek new knowledge and learning. I try to open myself up to new things all the time rather than look for reasons to dismiss them. I prefer to go into a new learning experience with an open mind rather that prejudice myself with preconceived notions.

You don't have to agree with me because that isn't important. I only ask that you be open-minded and objective with your comments.

I read one of the experiments from the Institute of Noetic Science website that attempted to discover whether "mind-matter interaction" influenced events as they would occur in the future, as they occur in the present, or whether the active force of the human mind influences events after those events occur. (Also, notice that it is already taken as accepted here that the mind will influence the results of a RNG, the question is "now, later, or before we think about it?"

They determined that human thought changes the likelihood of an event after that event occurs.

They came to this conclusion by running random number generator trials with a random number generator that would: randomly select a value between 0 and 1, then randomly select another value (80% of repeating the previous value, 20% of changing) twice (so results might look like 1-0-0, 0-0-0, 1-1-1, 1-0-1, and so on) and compared how often at each stage a button that somebody pressed matched the number that the random number generator put out.

Each experiment ran through this sequence 100 times. They determined that the human mind makes it 5% more likely for a particular value to come up, backward in time.

So basically they conducted this experiment on the assumptions that A) Human beings can influence the otherwise immutable physical laws of the universe, aka Mind-Matter Interaction; and B)That Human beings can effect events irrelevant of when those events take place in a time stream.

Now, I'm not a student of the physical sciences, but I'm pretty sure that both of those assumptions are %100 incongruous with everything else we know about the function of . . . well everything. It'd be something very different if they were questioning said assumptions, but instead they're opening with the inverse of what is supported by every other field of science.

The "experiment" itself is purely correlative. It presents no data to presume anything other than random chance in the results. There's no way to actually draw causal inferences from the recorded data.

The "experiment" itself is purely correlative. It presents no data to presume anything other than random chance in the results. There's no way to actually draw causal inferences from the recorded data.

In case anyone feels that my summary of the experiment was not generous or honest. They did later on expand their three-course RNG to a ten-course RNG, so I guess that's something. It is published by a journal that self-acknowledges that it works outside of "mainstream science," so there's that, too. Other publications in volume 20 of the Journal of Scientific Exploration include "Organized Opposition to Plate Techtonics", "The Relative Motion of the Earth and the Ether Detected", and "Ufology: What have we learned?"

Ufology is pretty cool, I used to love that stuff.

Edit: Also, they note that a significant number of the trials (69 incomplete sessions, 1800 trials) which showed negative correlation were scrapped because their computers crashed. "Whether it is merely a coincidence that individuals doing poorly in this tested opted out 'by accident' is unknown." I think it is funny that you can 'do poorly' on a 'guess whether this coin came up heads or tails' test. Also, audio feedback on accurate guesses, and a number generator that is 80% likely to repeat the last result.

I'm pretty sure I could guess about 80% right too under those circumstances.

In case anyone feels that my summary of the experiment was not generous or honest. They did later on expand their three-course RNG to a ten-course RNG, so I guess that's something. It is published by a journal that self-acknowledges that it works outside of "mainstream science," so there's that, too. Other publications in volume 20 of the Journal of Scientific Exploration include "Organized Opposition to Plate Techtonics", "The Relative Motion of the Earth and the Ether Detected", and "Ufology: What have we learned?"

Ufology is pretty cool, I used to love that stuff.

Edit: Also, they note that a significant number of the trials (69 incomplete sessions, 1800 trials) which showed negative correlation were scrapped because their computers crashed. "Whether it is merely a coincidence that individuals doing poorly in this tested opted out 'by accident' is unknown." I think it is funny that you can 'do poorly' on a 'guess whether this coin came up heads or tails' test. Also, audio feedback on accurate guesses, and a number generator that is 80% likely to repeat the last result.

I'm pretty sure I could guess about 80% right too under those circumstances.

When your publication readily acknowledges that it's not "mainstream science" that's usually a pretty telling point right there.

I read that next part correctly, didn't I? Opposition to Plate Tectonics? As in the people who still believe that plate tectonics is all a big hoax? I usually lump them in with the flat earth society and the neo-geocentricists and the creationists.

I do like Ufology though, I mean, it's not exactly hard science, but it's the kind of thing that could relatively easily become hard science if the right breakthroughs were to occur. The rest of this stuff just seems stuck in the past.

The point is we aren't inventing anything. We are learning all the time about what has already been invented. We use science to learn and explain. Each step through the labyrinth takes us to new information. In some ways we are relearning what people hundreds and thousands of years before us learned.

I think your definition of invention is a bit spurious.

In some ways we find out that, hundreds and thousands of years ago, one person out of millions had a particularly keen insight, and it spread. But to do this, we also have to sort the wheat from the chaff. That's what science does.

How are we communicating?

A thousand or so years ago, someone created something that could be called a battery. Nothing came of it, and nothing could come of it. It was weak even by the standards of batteries when they were 'reinvented'. To say nothing of the chemical research over the past century that has enabled modern mobile technology.

A thousand or so years before that, someone came up with a set of codified rules for logic. Other people, various elements of math. Newton built upon these, Gauss on them. Does that make the Fourier transform - the equation behind every single .jpg image you see on the Internet - any less inventive?

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I can't be content with the thought that there is nothing new and nothing more than what we think there is. We don't know everything or even what the everything could be. We constantly walk up to walls and tell ourselves we've reached the end instead of reaching out to touch the wall and seeing that it's only a beginning.

You are confusing the palette with what can be painted with it.

And heck - what we have isn't exactly that, even. Quantum Mechanics and Relativity are not our 'palette', per se, but rather descriptions that we can occasionally refine - we don't know Quantum Mechanics or Relativity the way we know 'red' and 'blue' are a certain range of wavelengths. Rather, we know them by how they bound our Universe. There are many potential ways by which this may be occurring, and there are some rather mind-boggling possibilities involved.

Their purview is not unlimited. Most obviously by the fact that they don't touch - there is something between them. We know this. We know there is another 'color' there. We see its effects in things such as black holes, and they are profound observations on their own.

And yet, at the same time, we don't. Throw too many particles into the equation (i.e. more than two) and the effects of these 'bounds' are ridiculously hard to compute.

I don't think I need to convince you that the complexity doesn't stop there. From this basic palette of fundamental universal equations and constants, we get others, such as orbital mechanics and chemistry.

And we're still studying Solar System formation. We're still doing chemical and materials research even on the most basic levels - I've heard metallurgists go on rants about how under-studied most types of steel are. Just steel. Forget every other alloy we can make. We do these studies because running the equations from basic quantum mechanical principles... just is not going to happen.

You said in another thread "I refuse to believe that I can be predicted with 100% accuracy."

There are groups of transhumanists who believe that such a thing as perfect brain uploading will one day be possible.

There is a reason people with more understanding of biochemistry, at their nicest, often think of said groups as naive.

All of these things, though - they're not what we've created. These are just discoveries. Poking at the Universe through every possible method we can think of, with every possible tool, to get a better description of it. So we can make better tools. And these are really our true creation - an ever-evolving toolbox with which we can paint and draw and write and sculpt and swim and dig and fly and...

There are so many colors for us to paint with. To create with.

You put your foot in the ground and, despite not wanting to paint with the overwhelming vast majority of colors currently known, or to discover ones in spaces where we haven't looked hard enough yet, you choose to believe in a completely different color, tangential to and outside of every color currently known.

I can't stop you from believing so, of course.

It is, however, a dead end. It's not a real color. There are no paintings to be made with it. No genuine creations to be made. Not even discovering new combinations of colors by combining it with something we already know.

It's sad, because there is so much to be made. To be painted, to be done, created. Humanity hasn't done a trillionth of what it is capable of.

It's sad, because however tiny any actual creation these days seems to be in the face of all that has already been done - every genuine addition is itself a beautiful thing.

It's sad, because so much of humanity seems to be in this very same rut. That they feel they can't actually add anything more.

The sum total of human achievement is a tower reaching brick by brick for the stars. Billions have been laid by those that came before me, each and every single one a labor of love by those who placed it. I realize that what I can add to this already colossal structure is insignificant in comparison to the grand whole.

This is fine. I can take pride enough in being a part of it, and craft and place my contributions as best I can, because they will have to support a great deal of weight.

In the mean time, though, I can certainly appreciate what others I can observe are doing.

You put your foot in the ground and, despite not wanting to paint with the overwhelming vast majority of colors currently known, or to discover ones in spaces where we haven't looked hard enough yet, you choose to believe in a completely different color, tangential to and outside of every color currently known.

Even if you hand me the biggest box of colors that exists and I use every single one to color the entire world I'm still limited to only what you give me? I don't believe that. I want to look for new colors that aren't known. I want to take the colors I have and make new ones out of them. Then I want to know what others think when they look at those colors and how they make people feel and what they see. I want to take the colors we can't see with our eyes yet and make them visible.

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The sum total of human achievement is a tower reaching brick by brick for the stars. Billions have been laid by those that came before me, each and every single one a labor of love by those who placed it. I realize that what I can add to this already colossal structure is insignificant in comparison to the grand whole.

This is fine. I can take pride enough in being a part of it, and craft and place my contributions as best I can, because they will have to support a great deal of weight.

In the mean time, though, I can certainly appreciate what others I can observe are doing.

Science and technology are on a learning curve that is nearly vertical now. This is your tower. There are those like me who believe that each contribution to that curve is just as important as the sum of all the contributions put together. Nothing and no person is insignificant.

We are where we are today because of people who asked some of the most important questions know to man. Where else? What else? What if?

Some of us feel lost when we can't answer the questions and some of us feel lost when we're told that all the questions have been answered. Phenomena exist and we've learned to measure them. We've learned about our physical world. Why should we limit ourselves to what lies within our horizons, though? We're like the first man who stepped out his cave and followed the migratory birds out of curiosity. Or the first hunter who followed his prey into unknown territory out of hunger.

Some of us are happy to sit back and say I know how this works and feel a sense of accomplishment. Some of us are happy to sit back and say I know how this works and feel curios. We'll ask what else does it do? What else can I make it do? How can I change it, build on it or with it? What more is there?

Do you think I don't appreciate what others have done? I'm alive today only because of some of the people who laid some of those bricks.

Here is some of what I believe.

"There is no logical way to the discovery of elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance."

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious; It is the source of all true art and science."

We don't know what it is that we don't know or how much is left to be learned. I'm on the side of those who believe that the tower you mention is tiny, a drop in the bucket so to speak, compared to all that is left for us to discover. I'm right up there with those who know deep in their hearts that human beings are capable as individuals and as a group of so much more that what everyone else wants to believe.

But - you knew that was coming didn't you. There is nothing "magical" about the scientific method. I know that sounds like a tautology but what I mean is that there is no fundamental law of the universe saying new knowledge must come about through ruthless hypotheis testing and application. Sure, it's a good way of doing it. Its a formal system that makes it easy to do (relatively) and easy to have confidence in what you've done. I'd maybe go so far as to say its the best way. But its not an exclusive way.

Poking about in odd corners, revisting some stuff "the ancients" did, looking at things in a new way, all the stuff that I get the impression Noetics is about could well reap dividends. It's possible - and I can't decide if I believe this or not so Im just throwing it out there - that deliberately looking at certain things in a way opposed to the scientific method could reap certain rewards quicker: If it was easy to find using the standard methods then it would have been found already. As I say, not convinced by my own argument, but meh.

The palette has loads of shizzle. Sure. And most good paintings follow a set of rules - complementary colours, formal persepctive etc etc etc. But there is a chance that doing something entirely different will produce something good. Sure, 99.999..carry on as long as you want... per cent of the paintings thus produced will be crap. But whats the harm in trying?

Even if you hand me the biggest box of colors that exists and I use every single one to color the entire world I'm still limited to only what you give me? I don't believe that. I want to look for new colors that aren't known. I want to take the colors I have and make new ones out of them. Then I want to know what others think when they look at those colors and how they make people feel and what they see. I want to take the colors we can't see with our eyes yet and make them visible.

If mixing the colors given to you counts as 'invention', then the past year alone brought more invention than the sum total of all human achievement up through a decent chunk of the 20th century. Of course you can mix the colors. That's the entire point. There's plenty to discover that's well within your reach.

Your own vision is limited to three primary colors, maybe four or five if you're a tetra or pentachromat - but in the latter case your vision would be still very close to a baseline human's. You could look up the UV receptors of say, a bee, and paint colors using that, and you could create additional colors by examining the far infrared spectrum. And of course you know the near infrared spectrum is there - there's a gap.

We know where gaps like that are - between Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, in the nature of cold (i.e. not neutrinos) dark matter, etc. Around these phenomenon we build cages. "Is it this? No? Okay." Over and over again.

Millions of people have an interest in finding this stuff out, however. It's very exciting - but because these subjects are so elusive, well yes, it is pretty steep. Very smart people dedicate their life's research to this and get applauded for failing with dignity. You want to succeed where they've failed?

No seriously. If you think you're not capable of it, imagine you are. "How well will these new fundamental colors mix with any of those we have?"

Probing the energy levels involved in the Big Bang for example would require a particle accelerator with a circumference of some thirty light years if we're lucky and a few hundred if not, and the power of a small star.

And certainly, that's an extreme example - we will probably find new physics long before that became even remotely plausible as a civilization.

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Science and technology are on a learning curve that is nearly vertical now. This is your tower. There are those like me who believe that each contribution to that curve is just as important as the sum of all the contributions put together. Nothing and no person is insignificant.

Some of it's pretty steep. A few years ago a high school student did a test of whether boiling water would freeze faster than colder water in the winter. A lot of prestigious stuff is pretty steep, by its very nature. On the other hand, these are pretty well-worn paths.

And it's not just science and tech, but also socially. Morally. These are no less important.

If you believe that each contribution is just as important as all of them together... while I don't agree with that logic I can agree that we are all made greater by each contribution.

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We are where we are today because of people who asked some of the most important questions know to man. Where else? What else? What if?

Some of us feel lost when we can't answer the questions and some of us feel lost when we're told that all the questions have been answered. Phenomena exist and we've learned to measure them. We've learned about our physical world. Why should we limit ourselves to what lies within our horizons, though? We're like the first man who stepped out his cave and followed the migratory birds out of curiosity. Or the first hunter who followed his prey into unknown territory out of hunger.

Then pick a horizon and cross it. Life's too short for dithering - even if you manage to live forever. Some of them are pretty far.

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Some of us are happy to sit back and say I know how this works and feel a sense of accomplishment. Some of us are happy to sit back and say I know how this works and feel curios. We'll ask what else does it do? What else can I make it do? How can I change it, build on it or with it? What more is there?

And we call the latter attitude science, engineering, arts.

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Do you think I don't appreciate what others have done? I'm alive today only because of some of the people who laid some of those bricks.

Do you think it's easy to hear "You/your friends/people you respect have done nothing of import!" a la your claim of no inventions above?

I'm proud of what little I've done, the few patterns I've made. They're built on older work, naturally, but they are new things in their own right. It's fine to call them paltry in comparison to the whole, but to imply that everything I've done might as well not be is not going to strike a positive chord.

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Here is some of what I believe.

"There is no logical way to the discovery of elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance."

What is an elemental law, and why is the scientific method insufficient for analyzing it?

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"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."

How so, and why?

Intuition has led to many insights but is also the collection of our own biases, which lead to mistakes. Some of them quite horrific. Intuition has its place - when time for purely rational thought is denied - but it is not the superior.

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"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious; It is the source of all true art and science."

This is purple prose - an entirely subjective belief on your part, one not shared e.g. by those who aren't naturally curious and exploratory. I find such people boring, but that's a different discussion - they're still people.

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We don't know what it is that we don't know or how much is left to be learned. I'm on the side of those who believe that the tower you mention is tiny, a drop in the bucket so to speak, compared to all that is left for us to discover. I'm right up there with those who know deep in their hearts that human beings are capable as individuals and as a group of so much more that what everyone else wants to believe.

None of which requires anything more than what we already have. There's no need to evoke any psychic, supernatural, or mystical phenomenon for humans to achieve greatness, to explain the Universe, to effect and be ready for whatever may be thrown its way. Appeals to them are not solutions - they are distractions, sometimes dangerously so.

The palette has loads of shizzle. Sure. And most good paintings follow a set of rules - complementary colours, formal persepctive etc etc etc. But there is a chance that doing something entirely different will produce something good. Sure, 99.999..carry on as long as you want... per cent of the paintings thus produced will be crap. But whats the harm in trying?

When a friend of mine was taking optics (a Junior-level college course) everyone was required to take very careful, detailed notes, in case they found something new. "While, in all honesty, you probably won't find anything - this area isn't really well explored yet, so we want to be able to reproduce things on the off chance that you do find something." The tower isn't quite as high or steep as people make it out to be. "Really? No one's looked into that!?" "Nope. You're welcome to it." <- The following in the open source community often comes out as "Feel free to submit a patch." The very act of getting a Bachelor's or higher in any science degree is the expectation that, somehow, you advance your field.

Properly collating all of this is a challenge in and of itself.

The basics, though - electromagnetics, relativity, Newtonian/Galilean laws, etc - millions of people have tried to find more. It's been so thoroughly scoured that we have a partial picture of what we haven't found yet. Without a fundamental change to the Universe itself, for some reason, we're still going to be teaching Special Relativity a century from now just as we teach that the Earth is a slightly egg-shaped oblate spheroid in later courses even though the proper term for Earth's shape is "Geoid", even if we manage to find something more appropriate to describe our Universe with than General Relativity.

I believe that each and every person has merit and value and contributes to the life stream in their own way. Each accomplishment of every person has an effect on all of us in some way. Even the most heinous villain among us gives people the opportunity to practice compassion, understanding and hope. To even suppose that I believe people don't contribute shows a lack of understanding who I am and try to be.

I believe that we should use the tools available to us to quantify our world and then go out and find more ways to measure and gauge and more things to measure and gauge. We need to understand what is right in front of us and then look for more, push the boundaries and open new doors..

I believe it's wrong to limit myself because someone says I can't do something or something can't be done or believes there is nothing more because they can't see it. How the hell do they even know?

The things that I posted that I believe are believed by others. No one has to agree with them or me. I read those quotes in lecture notes when I was in high school and they've been a sort of talisman for me since then.

I believe that we should use the tools available to us to quantify our world and then go out and find more ways to measure and gauge and more things to measure and gauge. We need to understand what is right in front of us and then look for more, push the boundaries and open new doors..

This sounds essentially core to basic, empirical science as well. Learning as much as there is to learn is the end goal scientific work; the theory of everything is something of a holy grail end goal, and every experiment and discovery works toward that end goal -- the ability to predict everything. It may never be achievable, but even the knowledge that it is truly unattainable would be significant.

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I believe it's wrong to limit myself because someone says I can't do something or something can't be done or believes there is nothing more because they can't see it. How the hell do they even know?

Who is limiting you? Who wants to? Why are you setting yourself apart, when this sort of thing is true of anyone who values knowledge?

I looked over the link Jude provided to The Institute of Noetic Sciences. We do need to remain open to possibilities but not so open as to be gullible. The problem with The Institute of Noetic "Sciences" is they aren't doing science so they will end up tainting what they "study". As an example: Energy Psychology In Disaster Relief http://media.noetic.org/uploads/files/S10_Feinstein_EnergyPsychologyInDisasterRelief_lr.pdf The idea proposes that tapping on acupuncture points will cause a relief in psychological trauma. It sounds like junk, the article is purely anecdotes and they do not study the phenomenon scientifically. Yet, there is something buried in the article.

"The man brought the trauma to mind, and though he never put the memory into words, his treatment began. Johnson tapped on specific acupuncture points that he identified using a simple physical test. He then instructed the man, through the interpreter, to do a number of eye movements and other simple activities. More tapping followed. Within fifteen minutes, according to Johnson, the man’s demeanor had changed completely. His face had relaxed; he no longer looked vicious. He was openly expressing joy and relief, initiating hugs with both Johnson and the physician."

Underline is mine and highlights a psychological tool that is being used (for a couple decades now) by some psychotherapists. I do not know the official term but the person is told to focus on the troubling thought/memory then follow the movement of an object with their eyes. The object is moved around in a random manner throughout the subject's forward visual field. After a short time – a half minute to a few minutes – there is a feeling of relief and the thought/memory is less distressing. It does work – my psychotherapist (at that time, a couple decades ago) used it on me. So it is likely not the tapping on acupuncture points that provides the relief, it is probably the dismissed "eye movements". Does the technique relate to REM sleep? Possibly. I only recently encountered mention of the technique again but have not researched it. But my point stands. By not doing a scientific analysis of the folk remedy, the IONS is going to bury the possibility of finding out that the Chinese may have developed the technique some time ago. Assuming someone didn't recently add the eye movements to the acupuncture tapping routine.

Looking into unusual ideas is good. Being sloppy about studying those ideas doesn't help anyone.

Shjade, Colbert is a Poe. His show is an outrageous parody of a conservative/fundamentalist.

Quote from: Urban Dcitionary

Poe's Law – Similar to Murphy's Law, Poe's Law concerns internet debates, particularly regarding religion or politics. "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing." In other words, No matter how bizarre, outrageous, or just plain idiotic a parody of a Fundamentalist may seem, there will always be someone who cannot tell that it is a parody, having seen similar REAL ideas from real religious/political Fundamentalists.

It's possible - and I can't decide if I believe this or not so Im just throwing it out there - that deliberately looking at certain things in a way opposed to the scientific method could reap certain rewards quicker: If it was easy to find using the standard methods then it would have been found already. As I say, not convinced by my own argument, but meh.

In most cases, though, this is simply going to lead to thinking something is right when it isn't, due to confirmation bias.

Great Scott, are you serious? I never would have uncovered such a subtle act on my own! You, sir, have saved me from great public embarrassment.

>.>

I did get that the above is sarcasm but I was not able to see anything in the earlier post which let me know you were playing along rather than expressing a genuine sentiment. I have encountered others who do think Colbert is genuine and not a Poe. Also, what does the ">.>" mean?